root – Page 7 – Zen Fools

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Q268. Why do I neither understand any words of Zen, nor feel any advance or change, even though I have practiced calming my mind for over 30 years?

October 18, 2016 Zen Fools

A. Practising hard is very important. However, what is more important is practising in the right way. Practising hard in the wrong way can lead you nowhere, or far away from your goal. For instance, after strong determination to reach London on foot from Manchester, you decide to walk 8 hours a day without fail. If you take the right path, you will be sure to get nearer and nearer your destination with time and reach there some day. If you, however, walk hard only in your garden, or in the opposite direction, no matter how hard and long you may walk, you will still be in the same place, your garden or farther away from your destination in spite of your vigorous effort.

So, checking whether you are taking the right way is as important as practising hard. You seem to have tried in vain to calm your mind by holding it firmly while not knowing what it is. The purpose of Zen meditation is not to keep your mind still but to realise what your mind is. Try to see what your mind is from now on instead of trying to calm it. If you see it clearly, you don’t have to try to calm it because it is always calm.

Student: “Why can’t I calm down my mind?”

Master: “Because you try to calm it down.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, illusion, Koan, master, meditaion, Mind, Photography, Practice, root, self, student, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q267. Student: “What is the matter when the gate won’t open, however hard I try to open it?”

October 16, 2016 Zen Fools

A. Master: “It’s already open”

Commentary:

If you stick to ‘open’, it’s already locked.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Buddha, Buddhism, desire, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, master, Meditation, Photography, root, self, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q266. How can I be free from all past karma if causation is inevitable?

October 14, 2016 Zen Fools

A. ‘Cause and effect’ is a rule for explaining the world of form. No one can escape it. Buddha, while alive, said that he himself couldn’t avoid it as well as long as living in the world of form. To become free from karma is not to remove, or do away with it, but to realise that karma is empty.

Let’s suppose there is a golden cup. It can be dented, or crushed when dropped from a height, or hit on a hard thing. It is dented in just the same way regardless of whether a foolish man drops it or Buddha does. This is called karma, or cause and effect.

To be free from karma is not to remove it, but to change our view of it.

People who see the cup only as a cup, without realising that its essence is gold, will get upset and disappointed when the cup loses its form of a cup, or is disfigured by any number of causes such as dropping or hitting it. Thinking that all of its value is gone, they are sometimes so frustrated that they may even give it up.

However, those who are aware that the cup is made of gold know that the essence and its intrinsic value never change regardless of what form it takes on. They are not swayed by the change of the form of it because they know that the essence of the cup is not the form of a cup but gold itself, and that there is no change at all in the essence. To realise the emptiness of things and not to be swayed by the change of them is said to be freedom from karma.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, illusion, Koan, master, Meditation, Mind, Photography, Practice, root, self, student, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q265. What am I when my body is not me?

October 11, 2016October 11, 2016 Zen Fools

A. Remove all the labels attached to you by others. Remove all words that can describe your identity. Let’s suppose you are a sixty-year-old British man named John who is living in London. When you say that you were born in London sixty years ago, what is left when all the labels are removed? ‘You’ or ‘I’, ‘were born’, ‘in London’, ‘sixty’, ‘years’ and ‘ago’ all are labels. You still have a lot of labels to represent your identity such as your parents, your job, your school records and so on. You think that you are human being, which is also an artificially coined label. Remove all artificial labels and see what is left, whatever it is. That’s it. What is it?

Master: “What is left now?”

Student: “Nothing is left.”

Master: “If nothing were left, what would be saying, ‘Nothing is left’?”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, illusion, Koan, master, Meditation, Mind, One, Photography, root, self, student, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q264. Student: “The deepest lake, when dried up, reveals its bottom after all. Why can’t we see a person’s mind even when he dies?”

October 9, 2016October 9, 2016 Zen Fools

A. Master: “Because you try to see it.”

Commentary:

Cut the tendon in the air and you can see it clearly.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, illusion, master, Meditation, Photography, Practice, root, self, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q263. What is emptiness?

October 6, 2016October 6, 2016 Zen Fools

A. Emptiness is not void but being both existent and non-existent at the same time, as it were, before division into ‘being existent’ and ‘being non-existent’. That is a state or an appearance without any imaginary lines. When asked what emptiness is like, some masters would say that it is full and others that it is active. All you can feel is emptiness. Even your body is emptiness. There is nothing that is not empty. If you follow emptiness, you will forsake it.

Student: “What is emptiness?”

Master: “Don’t forsake it.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, final goal, illusion, master, Meditation, Mind, One, Practice, Religion, root, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q262. The phrase ‘Striving to reach London while staying in London’ doesn’t make any sense to me. What does it mean?

October 4, 2016 Zen Fools

A. The purpose of Zen meditation is to experience emptiness in person. London is a symbol of emptiness and reaching London means to experience emptiness. It means, in other words, that we are trying to experience emptiness while being emptiness itself. Reaching emptiness is realising the truth that we ourselves are emptiness, not reaching it by moving towards it.

In order to see whether you grasp these words clearly, ask yourself the following question.

Student: “How do you feel when you realise emptiness?”

Master: “I’ll be wrong if I answer your question.”

©Boo Ahm

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, illusion, master, Meditation, Mind, Religion, root, self, student, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q261. Master: “When a guest comes, you should take care of him, but when a thief comes, you should turn him away.”

October 2, 2016 Zen Fools

A. Student: “How shall I take care of a guest?”

Master: “Don’t welcome him.”

Student: “How should I turn away a thief?”

Master: “Don’t reject him.”

Commentary:

If there is anyone you should serve or fight against, you are still being deluded by illusions.

©Boo Ahm

Bible, Buddha, Buddhism, compassion, God, Meditation, Mind, Religion, root, sex, sexual, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q260. Why do you think that some Christians and Catholics deny and even detest homosexuals?

September 29, 2016September 29, 2016 Zen Fools

A. If they think that God is always perfect and everything is created by Him, they should accept the fact that homosexuals are created by God as well. To deny them is to deny God. If God, as they say, is perfect, He never makes a mistake. Then everything made by Him is perfect. To speak ill of homosexuals for being what they are is to find fault with what is created by God and blame Him for His error. That means that they don’t believe in God’s perfection.

When God made homosexuals what they are, He had His intention. What they are is the exact expression of God’s intention. The reason why they deny and detest homosexuals is that they are still lacking faith in God and don’t know His intention. Finding fault with and even cursing the perfect work by the greatest artist reveals their inability to appreciate His masterpiece, which runs counter to their belief that God is perfect.

Instead of showing their own self-contradiction, they had better try to know what God created homosexuals for.

©Boo Ahm

Buddha, Buddhism, emptiness, empty, Enlightenment, master, Meditation, Practice, Religion, root, self, student, true self, Truth, Uncategorized, Zen

Q259. How can I grasp the core meaning of the Sutras?

September 27, 2016September 27, 2016 Zen Fools

A. What do you think the core teaching of the Sutras is? It is enlightenment. What all the Sutras say is nothing but how to attain enlightenment and what enlightenment is like, nothing else. If you are to grasp the core teaching of Buddha, don’t look for it in the Sutras. The Sutras are only like a map or an arrow pointing to your destination. They are not the place itself that you want to reach.

Don’t think of Zen meditation as being apart from the Sutras. Zen meditation is an expedient means to grasp the core teaching of the Sutras. The Sutras are maps and Zen is to move towards the destination indicated by the maps. So, the best way to grasp the core meaning of the Sutras is to experience what the Sutras say through practice.

Student: “How can I grasp the core meaning of the Sutras?”

Master: “Discard all the Sutras.”